Polish general and freedom fighter Thaddeus Kosciuszko presented US founding father Thomas Jefferson with a moral test. Historians still disagree on whether Jefferson passed or not.
https://p.dw.com/p/5Ga76US President Thomas Jefferson (left) and Polish freedom fighter Thaddeus KosciuszkoImage: picture allianceAdvertisementThe bronze statue of the man in 18th-century clothing gazes into the distance. The statue stands in the US capital, Washington, and is a likeness of Thomas Jefferson. His likeness can also be found carved into the rocks of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, alongside those of three other US presidents, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.
As the author of the US's Declaration of Independence, Jefferson is well known as one of the founding fathers of the country. Jefferson was a lawyer, plantation owner and politician. He served as the first secretary of state of the young republic, as its second vice president and then as its third president. His term as president is remembered for what is known as the Louisiana Purchase, the acquisition of the territory of Louisiana from the French. By buying this vast territory, the young nation almost doubled in size.
But like almost every celebrated historical icon, Jefferson also had a dark side, one that has really only been openly discussed for the last few decades.
This darker aspect of his biography is closely linked to Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a military engineer from Poland, who became one of the most important figures of the American war against the British. Many streets, squares and bridges in the US bear his name today – although the spellings of his name are not always the same, with some calling him Tadeusz and others leaving the "z" out of his surname.
Kosciuszko has also been honored in Poland, where he is mostly celebrated as the leader of the failed 1794 uprising against Tsarist Russia, that he led when he first returned from America.
Jefferson first met Kosciuszko in 1780 during the war of independence. The future president was then just the governor of Virginia while the Polish officer had already made a name for himself as an exceptionally talented military engineer.
The two men did not develop a closer friendship until 1797. After his release from Russian prison, Kosciuszko went to Philadelphia, which was then the capital of the US. Still suffering from the impact of his Russian imprisonment, Kosciuszko met regularly with Jefferson, who had become vice president by then.
In a letter to another general, Jefferson wrote that he saw Kosciuszko often. "He is as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known, and of that liberty which is to go to all, and not to the few or rich alone," the vice president said.
Then when Kosciuszko decided to leave America permanently in 1798, he asked Jefferson for an extraordinary favor. He would leave behind the fortune he'd amassed in the US and he asked that after his death, it be used to free and educate Jefferson's slaves.
Kosciuszko was a staunch opponent of serfdom and slavery and it was no coincidence that, as an officer in the US army, he conspicuously chose a Black soldier as his adjutant.
Was Kosciuszko's request an attempt to shame his American friend? Or did he simply want to remind him of the American ideals he had risked his own life for?
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Kosciuszko died in Switzerland in 1817 and two years after his death, in May 1819, Jefferson appeared before a local court in Virginia with his friend's will. Jefferson explained that he himself was unable to execute Kosciuszko's last wishes and he asked the court to appoint another executor.
In February 1810, Jefferson had reassured Kosciuszko that if anything was to happen to him, he would keep his promise about Kosciuszko's estate. In his last letter to Jefferson before his death, Kosciuszko also reminded his friend of his obligations.
Yet, Kosciuszko's last wishes were never carried out. It was not until 1852, after decades of legal battles, that the US Supreme Court awarded the estate to Kosciuszko's heirs in Europe.
The story of how the author of the Declaration of Independence did not keep this promise has fascinated American historians. In fact, after the discovery that Jefferson had had a years-long sexual relationship with his slave Sally Hemmings, this was seen as another major crack in the founding father's image.
The text of Kosciuszko's will is deeply moving, says Henry Wiencek, the author of a critical biography of Jefferson, "Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves."
Wiencek is convinced that Jefferson didn't want to free his slaves, likely because they were more valuable to him than the money in the Polish general's will.
The execution of Kosciuszko's will would have destroyed his luxurious lifestyle and wrecked his status among the economic elite of the slaveholding state, the US historian argues.
Historian and Harvard law professor Annette Gordon-Reed is of a different opinion. She believes that Jefferson's critics underestimate the legal difficulties of his position.
Gordon-Reed points out that Kosciuszko wrote other wills in Europe after leaving the US. Jefferson, as an experienced lawyer, recognized that years of litigation were inevitable.
Gordon-Reed says Jefferson was already older at the time, aged 75, and he didn't want to take that kind of problem on at his age.
Journalist and historian Alex Storozynski, an expert on Kosciuszko's life, thinks that the existence of other wills were just an excuse for Jefferson. Had he carried out Kosciuszko's last wishes he would have been at the very forefront of his country's emerging movement to abolish slavery, a movement that eventually resulted in the American civil war – and Jefferson shied away from that kind of position.
There is also a statue of Kosciuszko in Washington, in Lafayette Square. He is wearing the uniform of an American officer and holding the plans for the military fortifications that greatly helped the Americans win the war against the British. From his pedestal, Kosciuszko looks out at the White House, where his friend, Jefferson was the first resident.
The Kosciuszko statue's face is serious and author Wiencek is convinced that this must be ironic. Because if the two men were to be measured by their commitment to the ideals of liberty and equality, the Polish military man Kosciuszko was ultimately a greater American than founding father Jefferson himself.
The author thanks the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies in Virginia, US, for their support.
This story was originally written in German.
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